


Cadmium

by Eshnoazot



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Drabble, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 16:17:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17831930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eshnoazot/pseuds/Eshnoazot
Summary: The pads of his fingers are stained with a guilty red blood.





	Cadmium

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wolfchasing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfchasing/gifts).



The coward sits upon the floor with his pastels and wine, selecting hues of cadmium red, vermilion, Alzarian crimson; they bleed over darker lines and stain the pads of his fingers with a guilty deep blood red. He leaves his marks of remembrance on the floor, creating images of long-dead men with the fading screams of revolution upon their lips. His inky hair is speckled with red, but he wears it long as the last line of defence against the accusing ghosts of fallen martyrs that echo in his ears. What does a man do after he  _fails_  to sacrifice himself for those he loves?

They took to the street like hornets; a thousand enraged students with a message too loud and too right to be left alone. A sleeping giant awoke, and Mount Olympus erupted with a billion hungry dogs descending like bats out of hell to cut off the head of the protesting hydra. Yet even the marionettes of the gods took pause at the man tall in Grecian cut, with a blasphemous sinuous grace adorned in the vivid red of the cries of revolution. A manifestation of Apollo, a Pygmalion with a certain authority void of arrogance, and this god amongst men with a coward by his side gave the harrowing order for bloodshed-

_“Let them take us from our graves.”_

Later the coward, thoroughly drenched in wine, would repeat those words in a bravado-laden but paper-thin tone telling of one who speaks words not to be taken to heart. The coward would sorrowfully mourn the fact that Dionysus was never intended to incite revolutions in the manner he incited merriment. But Apollo of the sun, of dreams and of reason, so clearly carved from marble was meant to hold his head high against the caustic remarks born from embittered idealism that spewed from the mouth of his mud-made coward. It was always such a pity that there were too many too entrenched in the gutter to see the hopeful light of Apollo’s words. Plato's cave was always intended to be vicious self-imprisonment.

_“And of you drunkard?” Apollo dared speak once he and the coward were spared a moment, “Would you die for our banner and country? Why is it that you risk your very life to a banner you so vehemently renounce?”_

_“I have a vague ambition in that direction.”_

Nevertheless, the coward still sits on the floor with his pastels; an empire could crumble and he would still be there on the floor with his wine, remembering when he had damned himself to a quotidian life, over a quotidian death. His great scenes of battle stain the floor- an agnostic’s last pleading call to God. A stain of merlot, sangria, currant and blood.

_“Let them take us from our graves.”_

Apollo marched on with his hand gripping the flag to whom he devoted himself, and the coward by his side. No words were exchanged, but the coward knew well that Apollo only dreamed of a tomorrow where they would all be cannon fodder: bright and glorious canon fodder. Such a creature didn’t contemplate a life beyond the final stand, unless it was to bless Providence and to stand one day more.

_“Will you allow me to stand with you, Pylades?” The coward’s words, slurred by wine brought only a look that would have damned any man._

_“You make an_ unacceptable _Orestes.”_

Apollo marched with his lieutenants, and a coward too comforted by wine to see the gunpowder and fire and screams of treason that could only result in such glorious canon fodder. The scream too dulled by Dionysus’s intoxicated hedonism, and the blood on the ground mixing with drops of decadent wine. The blood matted inky hair and seeped into the core, skin stained with both blood and guilt which always awakened him to a world changed during his drunken stupor. A world much less bright since the death of his very own Orestes, his very own Apollo.

_“We shall die, but let us die with glory; draw thy sword and follow me!”_

_“You would trust a drunkard with such ambitions?”_

_“I would trust this from you, Pylades.”_

Sleeping through the apocalypse was an offence, yet unconsciousness was clearly a métier from which he particularly did excel. None would pay attention to a drunkard stumbling back from a hell soaked in the blood of angels. Not after the screams of the revolution were cleared away like weeds, to reveal the monotony of human suffering all that darker without the light of Apollo to refuse to partake in such dark deeds. Even Pandora, when unleashing hells upon the earth, had always tended to hope left inside. It seemed fitting somehow, that the coward did not receive even the most tender flame of hope to cherish in mourning.

The coward sits upon his floor; drawing scenes carved from his guilt and sorrow, as he remembers his Orestes, his Apollo- his Pygmalion who dare make him better than the sum of his liquor, who watched his inebriated Galatea disrupt the lives he touched, with such hope, before wine stole even the promise of a redeemed death of such a cowardly Pylades. There is scarlet and crimson, cerise and magenta, maroon, carmine, claret and burgundy, carnation and coquelicot. He mixes colours together in desperation, after a shade of red that only exists within torture and loss. 

When he finds it, the pads of his fingers are stained with a guilty red blood.


End file.
